Love Interest 2026 Update

[hank75]

3 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

I used credit cards all the time in Siem Reap. For cash, USD is accepted everywhere, but if change is small amount, say less than 10 USD, it is sually given in Riel.

I tried to do that too since I didn’t want to accumulate a stack of riels that would be useless to me anywhere else. But as Jimmie and Cam are there for the long term, it might be a good idea to not incur international fees each time you do a supermarket run? 

Other members may disagree but I use my credit card as much as possible in Bangkok too since I dislike collecting small bills and coins. My (probably incorrect) logic is because I misplace them or get fed up of the weight of the coins and hurl all small change into the nearest donation tin, I am losing money either way. 

 

[daydreamer]

Sorry, @jimmie50, I can't tell you about credit cards in Cambodia, I used cash only during my visit there.

Here's a photo I took from a Bangkok Airways ATR72 on my return to Bangkok from Cambodia.  You can see the propeller in motion on the right of the photo:

ThaI Airways used to fly the ATR72 as well.  I took this photo of one on take off from Mae Hong Son Airport in 2007:

 

 

[PeterRS]

Bangkok Airways planes became very boring on the outside. This is the one I took to Luang Prabang in 2003.

And another I took from Toronto to Montreal in 2006.

I first took a small twin prop DC3 in 1964. Never had any problems with them.

[a-447]

I took the same flight to Luang Prabang.

Had I known it was a propeller - driven aircraft, I would not have taken it.

I remember looking out the window and seeing the propeller right next to me. It was very scary!

[Keithambrose]

6 hours ago, hank75 said:

I tried to do that too since I didn’t want to accumulate a stack of riels that would be useless to me anywhere else. But as Jimmie and Cam are there for the long term, it might be a good idea to not incur international fees each time you do a supermarket run? 

Other members may disagree but I use my credit card as much as possible in Bangkok too since I dislike collecting small bills and coins. My (probably incorrect) logic is because I misplace them or get fed up of the weight of the coins and hurl all small change into the nearest donation tin, I am losing money either way. 

 

Also, I have cards that incur no FX fees, which helps.

[macaroni21]

8 hours ago, hank75 said:

I tried to do that too since I didn’t want to accumulate a stack of riels that would be useless to me anywhere else.

 

Possibly you live in USA? 

Not living there myself, ending up with fistfuls of dirty low denomination US bills is pretty useless to me too. 

So, if I have to receive change, I would rather take riels. At least I can use them for my next purchase or next trip to Cambodia.

On my recent visit, I stuck to riels and credit cards. The latter are not universally accepted but the classier restaurants and Grabcar accept them.

Didn't touch a single US dollar through my entire visit.

More details on my experience can be found in my post https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2026/02/09/techo-riels-and-tips/

It also discusses the central bank's dedollarisation policy.

By the way, I used a travel debit card to get cash (riels) from ATMs. The riel notes were crisp and clean.

[spoon]

If you bring cash (usd) to cambodia, make sure the cash is crisp, no fold, no mark at all, or it might not be accepted. 

[jimmie50]

22 hours ago, Tomtravel said:

Read a few books about Cambodia, they will reveal some insights about the society.

Thanks for the recommendations.  Will order on Amazon and have them waiting for me on my return to US in July.  

[Keithambrose]

11 hours ago, macaroni21 said:

Possibly you live in USA? 

Not living there myself, ending up with fistfuls of dirty low denomination US bills is pretty useless to me too. 

So, if I have to receive change, I would rather take riels. At least I can use them for my next purchase or next trip to Cambodia.

On my recent visit, I stuck to riels and credit cards. The latter are not universally accepted but the classier restaurants and Grabcar accept them.

Didn't touch a single US dollar through my entire visit.

More details on my experience can be found in my post https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2026/02/09/techo-riels-and-tips/

It also discusses the central bank's dedollarisation policy.

By the way, I used a travel debit card to get cash (riels) from ATMs. The riel notes were crisp and clean.

I used the ATMs to get USD.

[jimmie50]

Had a few interesting evenings of conversation with Cam about Cambodian history.  Not something I brought up or asked any questions about.  We had been watching a video on Youtube about Angkor Wat.  You know how, after watching a video the website will prompt you about what to watch next based upon your present selection.  Several historical videos popped up so we watched one about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.  I was always told there are three things you should avoid talking about with friends and family: religion, money, and politics.  Cam definitely has some very strong opinions about the current state of affairs in Cambodia.  I basically just listened to him since I know very little of the history.  His father would have been around 10 years old at the time the Khmer Rouge came into power, and his mother even younger than that.  Since they grew up in a rural agricultural area, it didn’t have quite the impact on his family that it did those who lived in the urban areas.  He would get so wound up that I basically just let him rant and didn’t ask too many questions.  He would be talking so fast and in a mix of English and Khmer, and frequently forgot to use any translation app.  What I have definitely learned is this: he has no use for the monarchy, does not care for the current regime in power and blames them for most of the problems that exist and will continue to exist as long as they are in control, and has very little good to say about the Vietnamese government in general for basically installing and then continuing to support the current regime in power.  I am hoping I can steer him away from Youtube on television tonight, or at least any type of history documentary relating to Cambodia.  It is the most animated he has ever been in conversations.  Definitely need to order those books about Cambodia recommended by @Tomtravel.  Checked and they are available on Amazon.com.

Just past the six week mark of this experience, so I did sort of pin him down last night for a serious conversation about our relationship.  When I say ‘pin him down’, it wasn’t anything like an ultimatum.  It was more about checking in now that we have lived together for six weeks and are getting a feel for what that life will be like together.  We are figuring out each other's idiosyncrasies and how to navigate those.  Just taking the temperature, so to speak, to see if anything has changed for him.  Basically I just told him that I had made my decision on airline reservations and Airbnb condo for the first month, and am prepared to make a permanent move to Cambodia so that we can be together.  I just wanted to know if he still wanted to do this or had any concerns before I uproot myself and spend the money for travel arrangements.  He said that he had no regrets or concerns other than the fact we won’t be spending as much time together as we have been.  He is more worried about me.  He will be working during the day, either on the new house once construction gets underway in December, or some type of job.  Those are things we have discussed before and are both aware it will be an adjustment.  Even though I will be applying for a retirement visa so will be unable to work technically, I have discussed the possibility of giving private English lessons 1:1…not advertising and not a class setting.  Also not at a language school.  Just perhaps four or five private students during the day mostly by word of mouth.  Just have to wait and see about that once I am physically in Cambodia and have a better idea about the lay of the land.

Heading to Chiang Mai for a few days this week, so won’t be online for any updates until we return to Bangkok.

[hank75]

1 hour ago, jimmie50 said:

Cam definitely has some very strong opinions about the current state of affairs in Cambodia.

I had a few of those conversations with my Cambodian regular. What blew my mind a little bit was that I still remember Cambodia from the pre-Chinese days, while he being significantly younger does not. By the time he was a teen, Chinese presence (and the notion of anything associated with Chinese businesses and language as positive, lucrative, etc) was dominant everywhere, the casinos were mushrooming up, alongside restaurants, karaokes and so on. When he first went to work in bars, it was the Chinese customers who were high rollers. When I reminisce about visiting Siem Reap and Phnom Penh when there was barely any Chinese influence (mostly French) and how much more authentic it felt back then, he just looks at me blankly. It feels very odd to have memories of a country that a local does not share. 

Also the uneasy relationship between Thailand and Cambodia is another sore spot. If Cam is like the other Cambodian boys I know, don’t get him started on whether muay thai is actually Thai or Cambodian. I was thoroughly lectured on the history of “kun Khmer” illustrated by multiple YouTube examples of a Cambodian fighter pounding a Thai fighter into the dust. 

Enjoy Chiang Mai! 

 

[KeepItReal]

2 hours ago, jimmie50 said:

 

  Even though I will be applying for a retirement visa so will be unable to work technically, I have discussed the possibility of giving private English lessons 1:1…not advertising and not a class setting.  Also not at a language school.  Just perhaps four or five private students during the day mostly by word of mouth.  

Don't do it. Seriously - don't even think about working, even off the books, on a retirement visa. It just takes one unsatisfied student or a neighbor's whisper to notify authorities and they will cancel your visa and deport you. Check with a barrister if you must, but be careful. If you want to stay busy, then volunteer.  If you need the money, seek a different type of visa. 

[Tomtravel]

When I asked my friend in Phnom Penh, an upper middle class student, about politics, a very friendly guy turned into a spitting 🐍 🙂. He refused to talk about that and never have I asked after. So I bought the books.
Emotions aside, the country is kind of neofeudal, which I think is challenging if you come from the rule-of-law society. My friend is actually escapist in his mind, which I also understand. Young educated (education is relatively new thing there) suspect there are alternatives, but is it reachable? Country is led by half crazy old autocrat and his gang currently.

[Keithambrose]

18 minutes ago, Tomtravel said:

When I asked my friend in Phnom Penh, an upper middle class student, about politics, a very friendly guy turned into a spitting 🐍 🙂. He refused to talk about that and never have I asked after. So I bought the books.
Emotions aside, the country is kind of neofeudal, which I think is challenging if you come from the rule-of-law society. My friend is actually escapist in his mind, which I also understand. Young educated (education is relatively new thing there) suspect there are alternatives, but is it reachable? Country is led by half crazy old autocrat and his gang currently.

Indeed, Hun Sen and his family control everything, jointly with China!

[khaolakguy]

4 hours ago, KeepItReal said:

Don't do it. 

+1

[spoon]

10 hours ago, KeepItReal said:

Don't do it. Seriously - don't even think about working, even off the books, on a retirement visa. It just takes one unsatisfied student or a neighbor's whisper to notify authorities and they will cancel your visa and deport you. Check with a barrister if you must, but be careful. If you want to stay busy, then volunteer.  If you need the money, seek a different type of visa. 

Even volunteering is not legal under retirement visa. 

[Travelingguy]

If your desire to teach English is more about having something to do and not abut the money, you could do language exchange instead.  An hour with someone.  First 30 minutes is you teaching them English and the second 30 minutes is them teaching you Khmer. 

They don’t need any special training.  You can have magazines and children’s books and they can talk to you in Khmer like you were a very young child.  It is the most effective way to learn a language.  It is called language acquisition.  

It isn’t commercial.  You get as much out of it as them and you make some friends.

[PeterRS]

17 hours ago, jimmie50 said:

His father would have been around 10 years old at the time the Khmer Rouge came into power, and his mother even younger than that.  Since they grew up in a rural agricultural area, it didn’t have quite the impact on his family that it did those who lived in the urban areas . . . and has very little good to say about the Vietnamese government in general for basically installing and then continuing to support the current regime in power. 

It's really good that you can discuss and be open about the country's history. It has suffered much since the King Sihanouk years when he first aligned the country to China. We also have to remember the utterly ghastly effects of America's undeclared war on Cambodia. It was this which created the political vacuum that basically allowed the Khmer Rouge to gain power. 

I am surprised that you mention the urban areas because the Khmer Rouge basically emptied them of all citizens. Millions were marched at gunpoint into the countryside. When there, they were treated dreadfully. There are even true reports of babies being murdered by being thrown against trees.

May I recommend that you read two books of the many which have now been written of the Khmer Rouge period. The first was written by the journalist William Shawcross whose father was the British prosecutor at the Nazi Nuremburg Trials. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia condemns the US administration literally for the way it interfered with Cambodian politics to install a regime more to its liking, and then destroying the country with its intense bombing campaigns and putting that war in context of the Vietnam invasion. As you will know, Hun Sen who led the invasion was a former Khmer Rouge leader before he fled to Vietnam.

The second is a much more local description of the horrific life in the countryside during those years, The Gate by Francois Bizot. Bizot was a French ethnologist who was taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge and chained in a jungle camp for many months. He describes in horrific detail how dreadfully the Khmer Rouge treated their own citizens. One interesting part of this book is that Bizot's captor was one of the most notorious members of that murderous gang, Comrade Douch. As the great author John Le Carre writes in the foreword, "Now and then you read a book, and, as you put it down, you realize that you envy everybody who has not read it, simply because, unlike you, they will have the experience before them." When leavng Cambodia, Bizot had to leave behind his Cambodian wife and child. He never heard from them again; no doubt casualties of the Khmer Rouge.

Douch went on to become the commandant of the infamous school turned into a Khmer Rouge Prison in Phnom Penh, Tuol Sleng. Of the more than 14,000 to 17,000 'enemies of the regime' who were imprisoned there, all were subject to interrogation under torture to gain false confessions. Only 12 of the prisoners came out alive. The rest were murdered and sent to the Killing Fields. If you have not been to see the school which is now a Museum, that is something you must do. For whatever reason the Khmer Rouge took photos of their prisoners and they line the walls. Hideously gruesome.

The list of regulations at Tuol Sleng

[hank75]

6 hours ago, PeterRS said:

The rest were murdered and sent to the Killing Fields. If you have not been to see the school which is now a Museum, that is something you must do.

For sure this is a must do. But I will never visit Tuol Sleng or the Killing Fields again. The memory from decades ago is still fresh, as is the recollection of seeing land mine amputees or those blinded begging outside Angkor Wat. You no longer see them, they are dead or too old to beg and have been tidied away for more pleasant tourism. My regular Cambodian guy is again too young to remember them, despite having grown up just outside Siem Reap, nor has he ever visited Tuol Sleng although living in Phnom Penh. 

On a more cheerful note this was also a time you could pick up bits of the Angkor temples lying on the ground and bring back a nice carving in your pocket. Very illegal of course and not enforced in the slightest. 

[vinapu]

7 hours ago, hank75 said:

 

On a more cheerful note this was also a time you could pick up bits of the Angkor temples lying on the ground and bring back a nice carving in your pocket. Very illegal of course and not enforced in the slightest. 

theft from unguarded store is still theft

[bkkmfj2648]

When I lived in Rome and on the rare occassion when I was invited into a wealthy home in the Parioli area, sometimes the local Romans would show off artifacts that were "stolen" from the Colosseum by the local Romans, even though it was a crime. They were proud to show off these artifacts, as they believed that it made them feel more Roman.  There was no shame.

It got so bad that the city had to install metal barricades after the millenial (2000s) to protect what was remaining of the Colosseum from further looting.

Another interesting tidbit of gay history was that from the late 1940s through the 1970s, the arches of the Colosseum were a famous gay cruising sex pickup area.

Pier Paolo Pasolini documented this specific underground subculture in his poetry, essays, and in his 1955 novel Ragazzi di vita (Boys of Life).

[Keithambrose]

20 hours ago, PeterRS said:

There are even true reports of babies being murdered by being thrown against trees.

You are shown what is said to be the tree in the Killing Fields.

[Keithambrose]

14 hours ago, hank75 said:

For sure this is a must do. But I will never visit Tuol Sleng or the Killing Fields again. The memory from decades ago is still fresh, as is the recollection of seeing land mine amputees or those blinded begging outside Angkor Wat. You no longer see them, they are dead or too old to beg and have been tidied away for more pleasant tourism. My regular Cambodian guy is again too young to remember them, despite having grown up just outside Siem Reap, nor has he ever visited Tuol Sleng although living in Phnom Penh. 

On a more cheerful note this was also a time you could pick up bits of the Angkor temples lying on the ground and bring back a nice carving in your pocket. Very illegal of course and not enforced in the slightest. 

At either end of Pub St,  in Siem Reap, there is usually a small group of musicians,  all amputees, said to be casualties of land mines. The music isn't great, but I always give them my loose rials. 

[Keithambrose]

5 hours ago, bkkmfj2648 said:

When I lived in Rome and on the rare occassion when I was invited into a wealthy home in the Parioli area, sometimes the local Romans would show off artifacts that were "stolen" from the Colosseum by the local Romans, even though it was a crime. They were proud to show off these artifacts, as they believed that it made them feel more Roman.  There was no shame.

It got so bad that the city had to install metal barricades after the millenial (2000s) to protect what was remaining of the Colosseum from further looting.

Another interesting tidbit of gay history was that from the late 1940s through the 1970s, the arches of the Colosseum were a famous gay cruising sex pickup area.

Pier Paolo Pasolini documented this specific underground subculture in his poetry, essays, and in his 1955 novel Ragazzi di vita (Boys of Life).

Same with the Parthenon. When I was a student  in Athens,  everyone picked  up  'souvenir'.

[hank75]

9 hours ago, vinapu said:

theft from unguarded store is still theft

Agree but it was the Wild West then. Worse than rocks, little naked children could also be picked off the ground by pedophiles as quite often you saw them sitting by the roadside completely alone.

Edit: this was slightly before that disgusting pervert Gary Glitter was caught and deported. He then went on to settle in Vietnam.